Gold rush: Calgarian, former firefighter Ross Pambrun hunts for lost gold in new reality series

Calgary Herald

01-05-2025

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When it came to Red River Gold, Ross (Memphis) Pambrun did not have to hear many details of the pitch to sign on.
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The Calgary-based Metis storyteller, entrepreneur, musician and AI expert had worked with Southern Alberta Metis producer Saxon de Cocq before.
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Pambrun knew him as someone who shared his enthusiasm for 'telling amazing stories of Indigenous challenges and social connection as we move forward.' De Cocq asked him if he was familiar with the story of the $2-million worth of British coins lost in 1870 during the Red River Resistance somewhere along the old Dawson trail in Manitoba. They were en route to fund a military force meant to put down Louis Riel and the Metis Resistance when they vanished.
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'I said, 'Growing up, these were some of the stories my family was familiar with, and because of the world I'm in, I've done a little research. What are your thoughts?'' Pambrun said. 'He said, 'Do you want to search for lost gold in Manitoba?' I said, 'I'll have my bag packed in an hour.' It was amazing.'
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Soon, Pambrun and the producers had put together a small team of people who possess both expertise in their field and similarly cool nicknames. They include Ottawa-based metal detectorist Laurie (Goldie) Gagne and Manitoba Metis guide Bill (Moose) Marsh. The unscripted series, which debuts on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) on Monday, is part of a treasure-hunt trend in reality-TV. The common hallmark in many of these series is that usually no one ever finds what they are looking for.
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Without giving away spoilers about what the team may unearth over the 13-episode series, Pambrun says the hunt is far from futile.
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'We always find treasures,' he says. 'Sometimes those treasures are proof of what's been happening in the community and they guide us. In this case, a lot of the history — the old weapons that we find, the jewelry and those tangible items that must have been so important for people who were pushing across the West — when we find those, it helps prove we are on the right track telling the story. My job is to find the gold, ultimately, whereas a lot of the other shows there is a tale of something that happened, but they don't even know what they are looking for. We actually have something that we know is confirmed to still be missing.'
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'It's gotta be somewhere!' Pambrun says cheerfully in the trailer for the show.
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The U.K.'s Royal Mint, in fact, still lists the gold as stolen or missing. As with many mysteries, there are varying theories of what happened to the gold, although they have yet to be proven. The team drive all-terrain vehicles down the rough and swampy Dawson Trail and use various generations of treasure-hunting technology — from metal detectors and ground-penetrating radar to sonar and remotely operated vehicles to search underwater — while consulting historical knowledge about the period. The team enlists various experts to give historical context to the hunt. That includes French-Canadian Metis artist Pierrette Sherwood, who is the director of the Dawson Trail Arts and Heritage Project; cultural anthropologist/archaeologist Mireille Lamontagne; and Roger Godard, who has travelled to the White Mouth River on the Dawson Road, which was the first road built by the federal government in 1868.